studies at oak ridge national laboratory indicate that trace quantities of certain actinide elements are migrating from waste disposal trenches in part as ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (edta) complexes. some of the strongest actinide complexes are formed by edta and related chelating agents. to some extent, the actinides are sorbed by the soil and a positive correlation is observed between the concentration of manganese on the surface of the soil particles and the concentration of the sorbed actinides. while manganese oxides have long been recognized as important scavengers of trace metals in the environment, sorption of an actinide element from a strong chelated complex has not been previously indicated. batch experiments were performed to evaluate the sorption of a plutonium-edta complex by manganese oxide. the manganese oxide was prepared as an amorphous coating on synthetic fibers following the procedure of moore. the prepared fiber was contacted by several nitrate solutions containing different concentrations of calcium, sodium, and edta to evaluate the effect of competing cations, ionic strength of solution, and concentration of complexing agent. all solutions were spiked with approximately 10 exp -7 molar of exp 238 pu. for all solutions, generally greater than 95 of the plutonium was sorbed by the manganese oxide-coated fibers after contact times of 10 minutes. in all cases using the manganese oxide-coated fibers, after 100 minutes of contact time, greater than 99 of the plutonium was removed from solution. for one experiment using a solution spiked with approxi